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Have You Ever Had a Knife FAIL On You?

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At first I was going to ask if you'd ever had a folding knife fail on you, but I decided to open it up a little to ANY knife. And I don't mean a knife you purposely bought to wump on for a YouTube test. I mean just a knife that failed on you when you needed it.

For example, I've often wondered if those LAWKS knives made by CRKT work as advertised. The only failures I've seen on those knives are ones that have been grossly abused. Nutnfancy coaxed a failure out of an M21-04 (one of my favorite knives) while thumping on it to see how well it would stand up to batoning. He rationalized that since CRKT billed their LAWKS knives as the next best thing to a fixed blade, strength wise, that if he needed something in an emergency in the woods, it might work. Unfortunately, the lock didn't hold (apparently because the retaining screw wasn't Loctited in place).

Next in line was the Tri-Ad lock system, a seemingly bulletproof system that actually does make a folder as strong as most fixed blade knives. Despite the caveats put out by Cold Steel, I've never actually seen or heard of a failure of a Rajah II or a Spartan Tri-Ad knife. I have heard of a number of fixed blade knives across the gamut.

So I'm looking for any kind of a failure. Let's say you bought a bargain knife at a gun show (where even the compass worked on the end of the grip). Photos would be even better!

I've never had a knife fail on me.... then again I don't abuse my knives. You might want to ask Neptune.... I'm sure all of the knives he owns have failed on him at one point in time.

The truth is.... if you use a knife for its intended purpose, it will never fail on you. I can say with confidence that I can break any folder you give me within a matter of seconds if my intention was simply to.... break it.

I guess this would be considered a failure: I was at a friends house waiting for him to get the trap machine set up for some shooting so I picked up a stick and started to carve the bark off of it with my Blur. On the second of third pass the tip snapped off bout 3/4 in from the top. Straight, clean break. This knife was only a couple of weeks old at that point and hadn't been used for much of anything....Then it took 8 1/2 weeks to get it back from Kershaw.

One knife that I had for the longest finally had to be retired. It's seen so much hard use in the dark and the muck and the filth, being used for deburring copper pipe and other stuff like that, but that's not what made it fail. It finally had to be put out to pasture because the blade could no longer hold an adequate edge and dulled at an alarming rate. I'm really going to miss carrying it with me wherever I go.

Wow...what a waste of a good Recon Tanto! Did Cold Steel replace it for you? Would an AUS8 have been less likely to break on you like that?

One of the absolute strongest knives I've seen is the Cold Steel line of Tri-Ad folders. And forget the Rajah II and Spartans, for a moment. The Cold Steel Clip Point and Vaquero are fine in their own right, but the new Voyager Tanto is really one of the new Super Knives.

The Voyager Vaquero (below) and the Tanto are both very strong knives,
but the Tanto is one chunk of steel that not only can pry, but cut...and
cut well!

The strong spine and nice hollow grind blade make it a very desirable
knife. It's close to being indestructible.

The only knife that's ever failed on me has been a slip joint knife. I was whittling wood and it caught in a thick part of the wood and when it dislodged, it snapped back and caught my thumb. After a few days, despite changes in bandages, the smell was horrible. I had a few stitches but I NEVER had any use for a slip joint knife after that.

Still don't.

Then one day I was in a Dollar Store and bought a knife that had a liner lock. I bought it and still have it to this day! And it's the one knife that got me into buying knives. Once I found I could trust some locking knives, I moved to lock-backs and frame lock knives. I never had a liner lock fail on me, but I now just don't trust them unless there's a LAWKS system. Nutnfancy's failure is the only failure of a LAWKS system that I've seen although I'm sure there have been others. All in all, I think modern locking knives are pretty good, but until the Tri-Ad locking system, I never thought any locking system was comparable to a fixed blade. The Rajah I/II, Spartan, and Voyager Tanto can chop wood and pry doors open. They can even baton, except for the Spartan, and it's only limited by size.

The Rajah (above) and the Spartan, both of which have Andrew
Demko's excellent Tri-Ad locking system.

The CRKT Lake and Walker Knife Safety system worked well on paper, but wasn't
nearly as strong as a fixed blade knife.

I see the tests that Cold Steel runs on its own knives and I see people on YouTube beating fixed blades into powder. But these are "tests" that they do. But when push comes to shove, I just don't hear of any knife actually failing, though I'm sure there are. I just thought I'd see if anyone here has actually experienced a failure.

I had bad experiences with a Buck Alpha Hunter and a Buck Crosslock. Both had very bad linerlocks and I could close them by just applying pressure to the back of the blade with my hand (not pushing really hard). I carried the Alpha Hunter for a few months on a trip through several South American countries, I only found out it wasn't working when I got back home. I was lucky that I only used it for slicing and had a fixed blade for tougher chores.

I had the tip break off on a Buck folder in the 80s. I had a critical retention piece on the molded plastic sheath of my Tekna Wilderness edge break within weeks of purchasing the knife in the 80s. Recently, I have had the handle screws fall out of a Smith & Wesson folder.

I had a SOG mini Aegis fail on me once. Trimming a branch and caught the knife in a deeper slice and upon withdrawing the blade folded. It didn't fold on my hand just onlocked from pulling it away. It wasn't any type of abuse what so ever, slicing off bark just got stuck a little and pulled and it failed. Needless to say I'm not confident in that blade any longer, not to mention the up and down blade play that developed pretty quick on that thing.